Brush Tool Properties

The Brush tool allows you to draw by creating shapes based on your drawing strokes and filling them with colour. When used with a tablet, it is pressure sensitive, just like a real life brush.

NOTE To learn how to use the Brush tool, see About the Brush Tool.

Brush Properties

The following properties affect the brush's size, smoothing and other properties for the drawing style of your brush. Those properties can be saved into brush presets for later use.

Property Description
Preview Area

The Preview area lets you see a preview of the stroke your drawing tool will make.

Preview Stroke

Brush Properties Dialog

The arrow button right of the preview area opens the Brush Properties dialog.

Edit Brush To Add Texture

While the Tool Properties view only gives you access to a few of the brush properties, a list of brush presets and other drawing options, the Brush Properties dialog gives you access to all the available options for your brush's tip and texture. For more information on the Brush Properties dialog, see the Brush Properties Dialog section below.

Maximum Size

Defines the maximum width of brush strokes.

If the tool is used with a pressure sensitive pen tablet, the width of the stroke will vary between its maximum size and minimum size depending on the amount of pressure used. If used with a mouse, the width of the stroke will always be its maximum size.

Brush Presets

These options allow you to select, create and manage brush presets.

Icon Property Description
  Presets list

By default, Harmony has preloaded brush presets. You can also create your own brush presets by configuring your brush, then saving its properties into a new preset. It is also possible to export and import brush presets.

Select Brush Preset

New Brush Preset

Creates a new preset based on the current tool properties.

Delete Brush

Deletes the currently selected preset.

Brush Presets Menu

Open a menu that contains the following options:

  • New Brush Preset: Creates a new preset based on the current tool properties.
  • Delete Brush: Deletes the currently selected preset.
  • Rename Brush: Allows you to rename the currently selected preset.
  • Import Brushes: Allows you to import brush presets exported from Harmony.
  • Export Brushes: Allows you to export your brush presets into an .xml file.
  • Small Thumbnail: Displays presets in a grid of small thumbnails with a preview of their tip.
  • Large Thumbnail: Displays presets in a grid of big thumbnails, with their name and a preview of their tip.
  • Stroke View: Displays presets in a list, with their name and a preview of a stroke done with each preset.

Drawing Options

These options affect the way your drawing strokes are added to your artwork.

Icon Property Description
Draw Behind

When enabled, your brush strokes will appear behind the existing artwork.

NOTE Your brush stroke will temporarily appear over your artwork as you draw it, until you release the mouse cursor or tablet pen.
Repaint Brush

When enabled, your brush strokes will only repaint existing artwork and will not add colour to empty areas. If you repaint semi-transparent artwork, your artwork will not become more opaque than it already is.

Auto-Flatten Mode

By default, when drawing, each new stroke is created as a separate drawing object, which can be edited independently from other parts of the artwork. When enabled, the Auto-Flatten option automatically merges strokes into existing artwork.

Brush Properties Dialog

Brushes have an extensive set of options and properties that are not displayed in the Tool Properties view, but rather, in a dialog you can access from it. To open the Brush Properties dialog, click on the arrow button right of the stroke display area.

Edit Brush To Add Texture

Tip Tab

The Tip tab allows you to configure the shape, size, hardness and spacing of your brush tip.

Property Description
Brush Tip Library

This is where you select the shape of the brush tip. By default it is round.

Minimum and Maximum Size

The minimum and maximum sizes of your drawing tool produce the thick and thin effect on your stroke. This works with the pressure sensitivity of a pen tablet.

  • Maximum Size: Defines the maximum width of the stroke.
  • Minimum Size: Defines the minimum width of the stroke in relation to and as a percentage of the maximum size.
NOTE Setting the Minimum Size value to 100% eliminates the possibility of creating width variation on your stroke. In other words, you would be forcing a uniform line width using the Maximum Size value.
Proportional to Camera

If you check this option, the size of the brush will be adjusted to the position of the camera on the z-axis. This means that if the camera is zoomed in on the scene, the brush will be proportionally smaller so that it appears the same size in the rendered image. Likewise, if the camera is zoomed out, the brush will be proportionally bigger.

Roundness and Angle

The Roundness and Angle parameters allow you to change the shape and orientation of the tip.

  • Roundness: The vertical scaling to apply to the tip. Reducing this setting squashes the tip vertically, allowing you to turn round or square tips into flat tips.
  • Angle: The angle at which to rotate the brush tip, counterclockwise.
NOTE

The squashing is not relative to the angle—if the tip is rotated, the squashing will still be done relative to the tip's original orientation.

Pen Tilt Sensitivity

If your pen and tablet support tilt sensitivity, this option allows you to set whether your brush takes your pen's tilt angle into account, and how much.

When your pen is fully tilted, your brush tip will be stretched by the percentage you set in this parameter, in the angle in which you tilt it. For example, if you set the Pen Tilt Sensitivity to 50%, and you tilt your pen all the way up or down, your brush tip will be stretched vertically by 50%. With the same setting, if you tilt your pen all the way left or right, your brush tip will be stretched horizontally by 50%.

Use Pen Rotation

If enabled, and if your pen and tablet support tip rotation, your brush tip will rotate with the angle of your pen tip.

Smoothing Tab

The Smoothing tab contains options to configure how Harmony should automatically smooth your brush strokes as you paint.

Property Description
Centerline Smoothing Defines the amount of smoothing Harmony should perform on the central line of the brush stroke. A higher setting will prevent your line from being shaky, but is liable to reduce drawing precision and turn sharp angles into curves.
Contour Smoothing

Defines the amount of smoothing Harmony should perform on the outer contour of the brush stroke. A higher setting will round sharp corners and reduce the amount of control points for the resulting vector shape.